Thomas Blom Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152950
- eISBN:
- 9781400842612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152950.003.0002
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter narrates the story of how the Asiatic question was configured in South Africa from the 1860s to the present as a question of necessary containment of culturally alien people. It ...
More
This chapter narrates the story of how the Asiatic question was configured in South Africa from the 1860s to the present as a question of necessary containment of culturally alien people. It describes how the township of Chatsworth was set up, imagined, and framed as a purely Indian space over decades of tense and often antagonistic tussle between policy makers and social activists. The chapter also looks at how specific methods of policing contributed to the current mythology of the Indian township during apartheid as fundamentally safe, as a place where “we never locked our doors.” It draws on official documents, newspapers, and governmental publications, as well as a range of narratives by older residents of Chatsworth.Less
This chapter narrates the story of how the Asiatic question was configured in South Africa from the 1860s to the present as a question of necessary containment of culturally alien people. It describes how the township of Chatsworth was set up, imagined, and framed as a purely Indian space over decades of tense and often antagonistic tussle between policy makers and social activists. The chapter also looks at how specific methods of policing contributed to the current mythology of the Indian township during apartheid as fundamentally safe, as a place where “we never locked our doors.” It draws on official documents, newspapers, and governmental publications, as well as a range of narratives by older residents of Chatsworth.
Thomas Blom Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152950
- eISBN:
- 9781400842612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152950.003.0003
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines how the space of the township gradually became marked and coded as a space that was interior to Indian life. It traces the emergence of the figure of the charou in the township ...
More
This chapter examines how the space of the township gradually became marked and coded as a space that was interior to Indian life. It traces the emergence of the figure of the charou in the township as the constant other of the emergent, respectable Indian community in Chatsworth. Mainly based on archival material, narratives, and ethnographic material, the chapter also shows how the older figure of the “coolie”—the stereotyped, lower-caste plantation worker—gives way to a new and deracinated menace within the township that is equated with “backwardness” and stubborn, traditional conservatism, which needs to be reformed in order for the community to fully evolve.Less
This chapter examines how the space of the township gradually became marked and coded as a space that was interior to Indian life. It traces the emergence of the figure of the charou in the township as the constant other of the emergent, respectable Indian community in Chatsworth. Mainly based on archival material, narratives, and ethnographic material, the chapter also shows how the older figure of the “coolie”—the stereotyped, lower-caste plantation worker—gives way to a new and deracinated menace within the township that is equated with “backwardness” and stubborn, traditional conservatism, which needs to be reformed in order for the community to fully evolve.
Thomas Blom Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152950
- eISBN:
- 9781400842612
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152950.003.0008
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter analyzes the quest for religious purification that arose from the Indian middle class in South Africa. It talks about the power and attractiveness of neo-Hindu movements in South Africa ...
More
This chapter analyzes the quest for religious purification that arose from the Indian middle class in South Africa. It talks about the power and attractiveness of neo-Hindu movements in South Africa and how new and more standardized Brahmanical forms of Hinduism today clash with the popular customs and traditions that still inform ideas of belief and rituals in the Indian townships. A strikingly similar logic of purification is at work among the Muslims of Indian origin, only even more so. Apartheid forced forms of social and ritual sharing upon communities that despite their common religious orientation have little desire or inclination to share social spaces or mosques. The postapartheid society has made it possible for the traditional Muslim elite to embrace global piety movements and to reimagine their own genealogies as somehow Arab and thus not South Asian.Less
This chapter analyzes the quest for religious purification that arose from the Indian middle class in South Africa. It talks about the power and attractiveness of neo-Hindu movements in South Africa and how new and more standardized Brahmanical forms of Hinduism today clash with the popular customs and traditions that still inform ideas of belief and rituals in the Indian townships. A strikingly similar logic of purification is at work among the Muslims of Indian origin, only even more so. Apartheid forced forms of social and ritual sharing upon communities that despite their common religious orientation have little desire or inclination to share social spaces or mosques. The postapartheid society has made it possible for the traditional Muslim elite to embrace global piety movements and to reimagine their own genealogies as somehow Arab and thus not South Asian.
Thomas Blom Hansen
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691152950
- eISBN:
- 9781400842612
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691152950.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction: define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a ...
More
The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction: define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a community. Almost two decades later it is clear that it was less the prospect of that future than the habits and horizons of anxious life in racially defined enclaves that determined postapartheid freedom. This book offers an in-depth analysis of the uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that have accompanied postapartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township in Durban. Exploring five decades of township life, the book tells the stories of ordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by the township, and how these residents domesticated and inhabited this urban space and its institutions, during apartheid and after. The book demonstrates the complex and ambivalent nature of ordinary township life. While the ideology of apartheid was widely rejected, its practical institutions, from urban planning to houses, schools, and religious spaces, were embraced in order to remake the community. The book describes how the racial segmentation of South African society still informs daily life, notions of race, personhood, morality, and religious ethics. The book also demonstrates the force of global religious imaginings that promise a universal and inclusive community amid uncertain lives and futures in the postapartheid nation-state.Less
The end of apartheid in 1994 signaled a moment of freedom and a promise of a nonracial future. With this promise came an injunction: define yourself as you truly are, as an individual, and as a community. Almost two decades later it is clear that it was less the prospect of that future than the habits and horizons of anxious life in racially defined enclaves that determined postapartheid freedom. This book offers an in-depth analysis of the uncertainties, dreams, and anxieties that have accompanied postapartheid freedoms in Chatsworth, a formerly Indian township in Durban. Exploring five decades of township life, the book tells the stories of ordinary Indians whose lives were racialized and framed by the township, and how these residents domesticated and inhabited this urban space and its institutions, during apartheid and after. The book demonstrates the complex and ambivalent nature of ordinary township life. While the ideology of apartheid was widely rejected, its practical institutions, from urban planning to houses, schools, and religious spaces, were embraced in order to remake the community. The book describes how the racial segmentation of South African society still informs daily life, notions of race, personhood, morality, and religious ethics. The book also demonstrates the force of global religious imaginings that promise a universal and inclusive community amid uncertain lives and futures in the postapartheid nation-state.
